


Simple Notation

by SadieYuki



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Teacher-Student Relationship, apparently Starfleet thinks it's unprofessional, based on a real-life incident I indirectly had with my boss, jim likes color coding things, kinda a mix of the two, mentor helping a mentee in general
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 10:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6280819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadieYuki/pseuds/SadieYuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim never thought Starfleet would be so uptight about colors and comments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simple Notation

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I wrote to vent about a thing that happened at work. Details on that will be in the end note.
> 
> Enjoy!

As soon as Pike released the call button to inform his yeoman to send in his next appointment, the door banged open (with an actual bang, the admin building was still stuck with antiques—it was a _historical landmark_ or whatever bullshit the Starfleet finance overlords tried to spin) and Jim Kirk quickly stomped into the office and snapped the door shut behind him.

Without pause, Jim marched over to his desk, threw his PADD in front of him with a clatter, and promptly sat down in a chair. A beat of silence passed as Jim looked at him expectantly.

“Hello, Captain Pike, it’s nice to see you. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with me. May I sit down?” Pike drawled.

Jim rolled his eyes, visibly vexed. “You accepted the meeting request, it’s not my fault if it’s at the expense of a busy schedule”

“Accepted as a courtesy, so one would expect the person requesting the meeting in the first place would likewise be courteous, if not more so,” Pike chided lightly. Jim glanced away with a small pout, looking vaguely chagrined. “Busy schedule in mind, how can I help you, Cadet?”

Jim leaned forward and rapped his knuckle quickly on the PADD he’d deposited in front of Pike. _“That_ travesty.”

Pike raised a brow, glancing down at the PADD. It was blank; it had gone into sleep mode, but Pike decided to rib Jim a bit. “This isn’t the IT department, if you’re having trouble with your PADD, you should take it up with them, not me—”

“Wait, shit,” Jim cursed impatiently, pressing the power button and inputting his passcode upside down. Pike watched in amusement as Jim settled back into his seat. “Okay, there.”

Pike looked down again and this time saw what Jim was presumably trying to show him. It was a report on diplomatic procedures during first contact assignments. Scrolling through it briefly, Pike noticed several comment flags and a ‘completion’ marker on the file, meaning it had already been graded. Now assuming that Jim had come to him due to a grading squabble, Pike selected the marker to open up the grade.

“Jim, you got full marks on this.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Jim grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.

“That’s not it, Jim, it’s just...” Pike paused, trying and failing to come up with the answer himself before asking, “Why are you bringing this to my attention like something’s wrong?”

“Look at the comments on the grade,” Jim prompted.

Pike did as instructed, reading the previously ignored paragraph below the number grade. After reading the commentary, Pike’s brows furrowed as he returned to the main body of the report, scrolling through it once again. What he found left him in agreement with the grading professor.

“Well, Commander Byawitz certainly has a point—”

“What?! _No,”_ Jim exploded, bracing his hands on the arm rests as he leaned forward. “Not you, too.”

Pike blinked at the emotion rolling off the cadet before shrugging. “He’s absolutely right, Jim. The presentation is sloppy and extraneous—”

“It’s _organized,”_ Jim stressed, voice disbelieving. “Color-coded comments make _sense,_ it’s like with track-changes so you can keep track of who’s editing a document; everyone gets their own color. Except in this case, my comments are organized by subject, like theoretical practices versus documented examples, and—”

“And it would be more professional to have those comments in a single color,” Pike interrupted, now trying to impress a lesson on him.

Jim narrowed his eyes in an assessing manner. “Is this a command thing? Or a masculinity thing? Do you guys just not like fun colors? It’s _more organized,”_ Jim stressed again. Pike’s lips twitched up in amusement as Jim continued, “Am I gonna have to pretend to hate this when I become a captain? Because I really don’t want to reprimand anyone for it and be a hypocrite.”

“Side comments on reports are frowned upon as it is,” Pike said. “But if they’re absolutely necessary then they should be in a single color.”

“Okay, but they _were_ necessary for this report. There was a word limit and there were facts I still wanted to fit in that were relevant but not wholly required in the body of the report, and—”

Sensing Jim was about to get stuck on a passionate tangent, Pike interrupted with, “Comments within comments are _absolutely_ not necessary,” mentioning the Commander’s other gripe.

Jim looked about to say something to that point, but he paused with his mouth open, closed it as he reconsidered, then he said sheepishly, “Yeah, okay, that might’ve been excessive.”

Pike leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his desk and looking Jim in the eyes as he said, “You wrote a brilliant report, Jim. Byawitz doesn’t hand out grades, you have to earn them, and you did. He was just giving you constructive criticism for your Starfleet career moving forward so you don’t step on people’s toes needlessly for minor issues.”

Jim glanced down and nodded, and Pike was pleased to see that Jim looked like he was planning on heeding the advice. “I still say the colors are more organized,” he grumbled finally.

“You are entitled to your opinion,” Pike allowed with a wry grin. “Just don’t piss off your professors and COs because you like colors.”

“When I become Captain, I’m gonna color-code the fuck out of everything,” Jim announced, getting to his feet and retrieving his PADD from Pike’s desk. “Differentiate between departments, memo types, everything. Sir,” he tacked on belatedly.

“I’ll look forward to that day, son,” Pike said warmly.

Jim gave him a small yet clearly grateful smile before leaving Pike’s office in a pleasant silence.

**Author's Note:**

> So the story behind this is that I got put in charge of routing a report at work, which basically means that while I wasn't the one who wrote the report in the first place, I was responsible for ferrying it around to all of the relevant leadership people and having them sign off on it. The author of the report had put hot-pink post-it notes to mark where there were changes in relation to the previous version of the report. By the time I had gotten the report, it already had a few of the signatures it needed, and some of the previous signatories had added their own post-it notes with comments.
> 
> So now we have the original pink post-its and now there are yellow post-it notes. Seeing an established trend, I decided to respond to the comments using blue post it notes and attaching them to the corresponding yellow note.
> 
> So basically this report looked like it was barfing a rainbow.
> 
> Anyway, the next person who needed to sign the report was my immediate boss, so I dropped the report in his box and waited for his comments/signature.
> 
> The next day, a coworker who had been helping me with the report comes up to me and says "So, (boss) apparently freaked out about the post-it notes. Like, freaked out to the point where he complained to (super boss) about it."
> 
> Super boss being wicked high-up leadership in the program.
> 
> So I'm sitting there, both in fright and exasperation, like "Fuck, I pissed off my boss some how" and "Why the fuck does he care that much about _post-it notes???_ "
> 
> Anyway, I took off the extraneous notes before it got to the next person, I was never formally talked to about it by my boss and I didn't get in trouble or anything, so it's basically just a humorous situation, but I needed to vent about it at the time, and this came out.
> 
> I hope you liked it! Tell me what you think!  
> -Sadie


End file.
